| paleface [sys=PCB; cat=Shooter_Vert; reg=JPN] |
| | | Released the year following ESP Ra. De. (see entry 758), with Guwange Cave again goes with the "people shooter" style, only this time you control samurai types running along the ground. Pretty neat! Some stages even have you running sideways or diagonally backwards--but still shooting upscreen.
Thankfully Guwange doesn't have flicker like ESP Ra. De., and I didn't find the slowdown to be as pronounced, either.
Guwange has some awesome, really awesome bosses, like how about a big cat with spider legs? Yeah, neat eh? Guwange's "evil spirits" theme in feudal Japan really let Cave's designers go nuts and come up with some crazy enemies, and it's all pretty cool. Oh, and a lot of them burst in big bloody messes when killed. Eww! Freakish monsters abound for the slaughtering, and it is good.
To slaughter 'em, the three playable characters have their standard forward shots, some nice-looking bomb-type attacks, and then, most note-worthily, a spirit they can summon to kick ass for them. You do this by holding down the fire button, and then the spirit appears and starts ripping stuff up. You guide the spirit along with your player, but the trick is that while the spirit is summoned, your player character moves really slow, so not only is it tricky because you have to watch in two places at once, you also can't dodge as readily as you could without the spirit. On the plus side, the spirits do a lot of damage.
The theme is really cool and different. Oh, and the three characters have really spiffy introductory sequences when you select your character. |
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| | | | In ye olde Cave tradition, bullet patterns are pretty hefty. Well, they're loosish at first, but in phase 3 they really kick in big-time and I get slaughtered right away. |
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| | | | Your summoned spirit can also slow down bullets! Yes, enemy bullets hitting the spirit slow down drastically, so they sort of pile up on the spirit's position. If you then manage to kill the enemy who shot them while they're still onscreen and slowed, they turn into gold or whatever and you collect 'em for big points. But don't forget that your actual selected character is slow and thus vulnerable all the time your spirit is there. It produces nice tension. |
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